Sherin Merchant, left, with Dr. Nancy Newhouse, president of the A.A.P. Newhouse invited Sherin to apply for a program in research methodology, developed by Universities of Harvard and Michigan, which will happen in the summer of 2014.

Congratulations to Sherin Merchant, a University of Florida undergraduate student who volunteers in Dr. Luciana Shaddox’s laboratory. Merchant won the prestigious “Clinical Impact Award” during the American Academy of Periodontology annual meeting in September 2013 for her poster presentation on comparing clinical response to treatment between primary and permanent dentition affected by localized aggressive periodontitis in children.

“We are so proud of Sherin. This is the first time an undergraduate student has competed and won this award. It is so unusual that the conference planners weren’t sure how to even register her for the meeting and decided to waive the fee,” said Luciana Shaddox, D.D.S., M.S., Ph.D., an associate professor in the University of Florida Department of Periodontology.

A year ago Merchant, a senior majoring in biology, began working on the study that is part of an NIH-funded study on aggressive periodontitis in children. Merchant also received a UF McNairs scholarship to help her research development. She is now applying for the UF College of Dentistry’s combined DMD/PhD program.

Merchant and another UF Periodontology graduate fellow, Fatemah Gholami, were two of eight finalists in the forum poster competition for clinical research during this meeting. The two students were competing with periodontal residents as well as faculty from all over the world.

“The board of examiners for the competition was very impressed with her knowledge and performance, especially given that she is not even in dental school yet,” Shaddox said.

“If you think about it, your oral cavity is a gateway for everything,” says Shannon Wallet, Ph.D., an immunologist and assistant professor in the College of Dentistry. “It is a specialized compartment that has to deal with a lot of insults, and if it does not deal properly with those insults, it directly affects everything else that happens in your body.”

Shannon Wallet and Luciana Shaddox/Photo by Jesse S. Jones

To better understand the relationship between problems in the mouth and overall health, Wallet teamed with periodontist Luciana Shaddox, D.D.S., Ph.D., after coming to UF four years ago.

Together, they are working on two major projects, one of which involves treating a group of children in Tallahassee who have an aggressive form of periodontitis. Caused by bacteria that stick to teeth under the surface of the gums, periodontitis can lead to bone loss, gum inflammation and ultimately, loss of teeth. It’s typically seen in adults, says Shaddox, an assistant professor in the College of Dentistry. These children have a rare and aggressive form of periodontitis that scientists don’t know much about.

“Our goal is to find out not only what bugs are involved but also the immunological mechanisms at work and the systemic immune response,” Shaddox says. “Right now we target the bugs, but if we find other mechanisms play a big role maybe we can add something else to it.”

The researchers are also looking at the relationship between diabetes and periodontitis. They hope to find out how treating the disease in the mouth can affect a patient’s overall health and control of his or her diabetes.

“A lot of treatments are so invasive,” Wallet says. “If we can fix it in the oral cavity than maybe we can bypass the complications of treatment.”

Nina Guba, a D.M.D. student in the class of 2015, won second place in the 2012 Student Research Group DENTSPLY/Caulk competition in the clinical science category during the American Association of Dental Researchers Annual Meeting in Tampa, Fla., March 21 – 24.

The competition was held on March 21. Guba was one of 14 dental students from across the United States selected to give a ten-minute presentation to a student panel of judges. Three winners were selected in two categories, basic and clinical science, and were recognized during the annual meeting’s closing ceremonies. As a second-place winner, Guba received $500 each and a commemorative plaque.

Guba’s presentation, “Inflammatory response of Aggressive Periodontitis upon Stimulation of toll-like receptors,” discussed her work comparing the inflammatory response of patients with localized aggressive periodontitis (LAP) to the response of their healthy siblings and controls when toll-like receptors were stimulated. LAP is a severe, rapidly progressive form of periodontal disease that can result in tooth loss.

Background: Localized aggressive periodontitis (LAP) is a severe rapidly progressive form of periodontal disease, localized to incisors and first molars of, usually, young individuals, and can result in eventual tooth loss. The inflammatory process of the disease is attributed to recognition of bacterial components by Toll-like receptors (TLRs) in epithelial cells. Previous research has shown that a hyper-inflammatory phenotype is concomitant with LAP patients upon stimulation of TLR2 and TLR4.

Methods: Whole peripheral blood samples were collected from a cohort of African-American adolescents aged 7-20 years. This included 9 patients diagnosed with LAP, 8 healthy siblings of LAP patients, and 7 healthy unrelated controls. Whole blood was stimulated with the appropriate ligand for each TLR and incubated for 24 hours. Unstimulated blood served as a negative control. A Luminex assay was used to measure the levels of 14 different chemo/cytokines and analyzed using Milliplex software. Kruskal-Wallis ANOVA with Dunn’s multiple comparisons were used for comparisons among experimental groups for each cytokine.

Results: A hyper-response was found for LAP patients upon different TLRs, especially TLR2 stimulations for different cytokines. Overall, LAP exhibited a more robust cytokine response than either healthy control group, and healthy siblings exhibited slightly higher levels of certain cytokines than unrelated healthy controls.

Conclusion: This study suggests that stimulation of different TLRs, especially TLR2, elicits a unique cytokine profile that is more robust in LAP patients. This hyper-inflammatory response is thought to contribute the severe nature of the disease.

Luciana Shaddox, D.D.S., M.S., Ph.D., an assistant professor in the Department of Periodontology, was selected for a University of Florida Excellence Award for Assistant Professors.

Shaddox was one of only 12 selected for the award given by the Provosts Office. The award focuses on junior faculty and recognizes their potential for excellence in research. Each award is a one-time allocation of $5,000 in support of research that can be used to fund travel, equipment, books, graduate students and other research-related expenses.

Shaddox heads several research projects including an NIH-funded R01 grant to study aggressive periodontitis in children. In 2010, she received a Teaching Fellowship Award from the American Academy of Periodontology which recognizes young faculty members’ success in educating. She obtained her dental, master’s and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Campinas in Sao Paulo, Brazil.

University of Florida Excellence Award for Assistant Professors
The Award Selection Committee members are appointed annually from University of Florida Distinguished Professors and Eminent Scholars. For a list of all the winners and more information: http://www.aa.ufl.edu/excellence-awards